A server-side dynamic web page is a web page whose construction is controlled by an application server processing server-side scripts. In server-side scripting,parameters determine how the assembly of every new web page proceeds, including the setting up of more client-side processing.

A client-side dynamic web page processes the web page using HTML scriptingrunning in the browser as it loads. JavaScript and other scripting languages determine the way the HTML in the received page is parsed into the Document Object Model, or DOM, that represents the loaded web page. The same client-side techniques can then dynamically update or change the DOM in the same way.

A dynamic web page is then reloaded by the user or by a computer program to change some variable content. The updating information could come from the server, or from changes made to that page's DOM. This may or may not truncate the browsing history or create a saved version to go back to, but a dynamic web page update using Ajax technologies will neither create a page to go back to, nor truncate the web browsing history forward of the displayed page. Using Ajax technologies the end user gets one dynamic page managed as a single page in the web browser while the actual web content rendered on that page can vary. The Ajax engine sits only on the browser requesting parts of its DOM, the DOM, for its client, from an application server.

DHTML is the umbrella term for technologies and methods used to create web pages that are not static web pages. Client-side-scripting, server-side scripting, or a combination these make for the dynamic web experience in a browser.